The Whirlpool Corporation is an American multinational manufacturer and marketer of home appliances, headquartered in Michigan, United
Question:
The Whirlpool Corporation is an American multinational manufacturer and marketer of home appliances, headquartered in Michigan, United States. It is the world’s leading major home appliance company. The Fortune 500 Company has annual revenue of approximately $21 billion, 92,000 employees, and more than 70 manufacturing and technology research centers around the world. The company markets Whirlpool, Maytag, KitchenAid, Estate, and other brands. The Whirlpool pervasive vision is to “be the best Kitchen & Laundry Company, in constant pursuit of improving life at home”. It seeks to achieve every home, everywhere, with pride, passion and performance. This vision rests on the pillars of innovation, operational excellence, customer-centric approach and diversified talent. These are embedded within the business goals, strategy,
processes and work culture of Whirlpool.
Whirlpool TQM is based on manufacturing quality products while keeping customer focus. Gilles Morel, President of Whirlpool Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and Executive
Vice President of Whirlpool Corporation says:
“At Whirlpool, we are in constant pursuit of improving life at home and have been driving product innovation to delight our consumers for over 100 years. Our consumers remain at the core of everything we do, especially when it comes to product design, and we are committed to creating household appliances of exceptional quality and performance to continue enhancing people’s lives at home”
Based on their customer focus approach, the whirlpool considers that if customers would call a repair technician, this might be expensive and time-consuming. Thus, there are many problems that customers can solve themselves by consulting the troubleshooting tips on the Whirlpool website. With just a few tools and a bit of knowledge, customers’ appliances can be working again. Customer perceptions are considered since the design phase. Moreover, product safety is at the forefront of everything done at Whirlpool Corporation. The product safety system has long been recognized as industry-leading and has been benchmarked by other companies as a way to improve their own practices. Through its consistent and proactive approach, Whirlpool Corporation has achieved a strong consumer safety record for decades. Their approach includes rigorous safety designing and testing before their products go to market, and monitoring the safety of their products after they are in customers’ homes.
1. There is an obvious relationship between quality and design of Whirlpool production. Which model of quality is applied?
2. Do you think Whirlpool is using the Reliability analysis tools correctly? Justify.
3. Whirlpool Corporation provides an easy access to maintenance and repair processes. Which step in the product development process does this refer to? Elaborate. (25 marks)
4. Is Whirlpool Corporation implementing the Design for Maintainability properly? Which concepts should be given more priority?
Governmental and Nonprofit Accounting
ISBN: 978-0132751261
10th edition
Authors: Robert Freeman, Craig Shoulders, Gregory Allison, Robert Smi